OSU's Urban Meyer mess a product of college sports' code of silence

So much can be said about so many things that went wrong the last few years regarding Ohio State’s handling of domestic abuse allegations against former assistant coach Zach Smith. But it was a recent call to silence by football coach Urban Meyer that defined the failure of leadership in the athletics department and Buckeyes’ football office.

From Ohio State’s official report, delivered to media after the university announced Meyer and athletic director Gene Smith would serve suspensions:

On the night of July 23, 2018, at 7:08 p.m., Meyer directed a message to staff stating that the reasons for Zach Smith’s dismissal were "Core value violation and cumulative issues. ‘Win the moment’ – most important thing is team and players at this time.” Meyer further directed “Zero conversation about Zach’s past issues. We need to help him as he moves frwd. Team and players!!"

If you want to understand how Meyer came to be placed on paid administrative leave for nearly three weeks and then suspended for the Buckeyes’ first three games of 2018, it’s all right there. A lot of it is decoration on the tree, but the trunk holding all the broken branches is this:

“Zero conversation.”

That’s the culture Meyer enforced, even after reports of Smith’s behavior toward his wife — allegations of abuse from an incident in 2015 and later a domestic violence civil protection order filed against him on July 20 — led to Meyer dismissing Zach Smith just a few weeks before preseason practice began.

It’s that sort of atmosphere that’s so problematic for those in the employ of college coaches. Assistant coaches, administrative staffers, even office workers for Buckeyes football — all saw their careers imperiled by the actions of a single, eminently replaceable receivers coach. And yet it seems none reported Zach Smith’s behavior to their superiors or encouraged a resolution.

Because even if Gene Smith and Meyer believed there wasn’t enough action from law enforcement on the domestic abuse allegations to pass that information along to their bosses for consideration — a judgment those bosses ultimately found to be errant enough to warrant punishment — Zach Smith’s reported pattern of untoward behavior was known to at least some staff members, according to OSU’s summary of findings. But it was only the publicity around Zach Smith’s alleged abuse that ultimately provoked a dismissal.

“Omerta is very strong,” said David Ridpath, Ohio University professor of sports administration and a former coach and compliance officer in Marshall's athletic department. “When I worked in that business, there was a lot of ‘We take care of our business in-house,’ even to the extent of when athletes would get in trouble. It was, ‘This can’t get out to the media, it’s not going to be taken care of through campus processes.’

“That’s not unusual, that you would have coaches say, ‘I’m taking care of this by myself.’ Then when I got out of coaching and I was on the administrative side, I couldn’t believe how much that went on. If that could change, I think that would be very, very helpful.”

It isn’t entirely clear how much anyone inside the Ohio State football office knew about the allegations against Zach Smith, relative to his wife. But the university’s investigation revealed coaches were aware he was involved in a sexual relationship with a secretary from the football office, “took sexually explicit photographs of himself in offices and at the White House” and had sex toys delivered to him in the football office suite.

What often is lost in the discussion when the job security of a coach such as Meyer is imperiled is the fate of his staff. If he were dismissed, it would also lead to a vast turnover of other coaches and staff members at OSU. For many, this will be the best gig they ever have. For some, it may be the final step on the way to the top of the coaching ladder. Rutgers' Chris Ash, Cincinnati’s Luke Fickell and Texas’ Tom Herman all moved on from Meyer’s Ohio State staff to directly become FBS head coaches.

And yet, even with an average salary of more than $750,000 at stake, none of those coaches voiced concerns to Meyer or other athletic department officials — either because they expected Meyer would not be receptive, or because of the coaches’ code that, in other circumstances, discourages those who become aware of recruiting violations by competitors from reporting them to the NCAA.

College athletics cannot fully escape the issues it has had with sexual violence — one episode is more than can be tolerated, but there have been so many this decade alone — if those who become aware of issues either remain silent, inert or, worse, actively engaged in covering it up.

There were concerns initially that had been the case with Meyer, and he did not assuage those doubts when presenting false information in his discussions of the 2015 Zach Smith spousal abuse allegation at Big Ten Media Days on July 24. Meyer subsequently asserted in a Twitter statement that he had reported the matter to his superiors, something the OSU investigation confirmed. Still, his actions and the athletic director's were found to be woefully insufficient.

“The macho culture of coaching is gradually being stripped away,” said ESPN basketball analyst Fran Fraschilla, who spent over two decades as a Division I coach. “You have to coach transformationally and not transactionally. If you know if you have people of ill repute on your staff, it’s toxic for your culture.

“You have to have your antennae up for those people on your coaching staff whose behavior is going to run counter to the way you want to run your program. And I think you have to do everything in your power to eliminate that kind of behavior, or it will bring you down. There certainly are going to be guys under your watch who make mistakes of judgment, bad behavior. But how you handle that can put your own career at risk.

“I think certain staffs have that relationship and communication and connection. Those are what I call transformational staffs. Those are staffs whose whole is greater than the sum of the parts. A transactional coaching staff is one in which, ‘Hey, you coach the wide receivers, and do the best you can, and that’s all I care to need from you.’ I think that’s a major issue.”